Many manufacturing processes include one or more laser-based processing steps. Exposure to pulsed laser beams can be used for material ablation, recrystallization, annealing, or other processes. For example, pulsed laser beams have been used to locally melt amorphous silicon layers to promote local crystallization. In other examples, laser pulses are applied to remove surface layers based on an ablation process. Continuous wave lasers have been used in welding and other processes. Such laser based processes permit precise control of processed areas, and some beams can be conveniently delivered with optical fiber based beam delivery systems. However, available processing methods are limited due to the inherent optical response of materials to a selected wavelength. These limitations tend to constrain the types of materials processing and the achievable performance available with laser-based optical processing.